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New 3D Game Engine Targets Linux Gamers

02-14-2010, 04:00 AM

Phoronix: New 3D Game Engine Targets Linux Gamers

While there are many open-source games available (just see the recent discussion about the most advanced GPL-ed FPS), most of them are based upon the ioquake3 game engine that in turn is based upon id Software's open-source id Tech 3 engine. There's also games like Nexuiz that use the DarkPlaces engine and then also Warsow that uses QFusion...

The open-source 3d games I've seen have really advanced engines, and that's great, but the big difference between them and commercial games is just the art/content in them. It'd be cool if more talented artists used FOSS games as their portfolios rather than mods for commercial games.

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Several open source 3D engine projects have a very large number of mods made. However, as projects tend to die off, the mods are still there.

I think XreaL's approach to make it compatible with Doom3 .pk3 files and other formats is absolutely the right step! That way one can "upgrade" existing mods (like high resolution textures and speculars etc) more easily without having to redo everything; redoing the geometry of a large map is probably a lesser task than doing it all from scratch.

The number of available maps/mods is absolutely essential to any open source 3D engine, as it is even more time consuming than writing the engine itself. It is not more difficult, but, please note, much more time consuming.

This was noted by John Carmack some ten years ago who said that once the world got more detailed they had to hire more and more artists. And, as the worlds got larger, as from a 50 by 50 meter map to a 500 by 500 meter map, the additional artists were needed even more.

The bottleneck today appears to be in the map making, not in the making of the engine; this does however recognize that the engine making is a more complex task not even remotely possible for most artists.

So, my recommendation to Panos, if you want to make sure you engine is the future, make sure your engine can without too much hassle import one or a few of those maps/mod formats for which there are already a large number of projects available.

And, if that would require modifying any map making tool, e.g. radiant, please do that too.

Otherwise, your AnKi engine looks awasome!!!

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I still believe games can only be done in a proprietary commercial environment. Too much money is needed to develop a modern game. Too much knowledge, graphics, story, music, physics, time. I just can't see a Final Fantasy-like game made in an open environment.
I just hope wine gets to the point where x game just works out of the box. Developers will never abandon DirectX for gaming.

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I still believe games can only be done in a proprietary commercial environment. Too much money is needed to develop a modern game. Too much knowledge, graphics, story, music, physics, time. I just can't see a Final Fantasy-like game made in an open environment.
I just hope wine gets to the point where x game just works out of the box. Developers will never abandon DirectX for gaming.

Games like Final Fantasy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naUSBEVRLng) have a very short time at the market. It is a very big risk to finance a project of that scale. Many fail, deerly, to the financier's demise too at times. And, besides, if the story is developed in public, where will the "surprises" be?!

However, Other, far less story-based games like Tetris and Quake, do have a market too. Did you know that the best selling games are not story driven? Or, they have a setting which doesn't need 20 minute explainings.

Call of Duty, the Modern Warfare series are the best selling games ever. And, many open source project are decently close to them, in pace and style, even if it could be better.

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Games like Final Fantasy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naUSBEVRLng) have a very short time at the market. It is a very big risk to finance a project of that scale. Many fail, deerly, to the financier's demise too at times. And, besides, if the story is developed in public, where will the "surprises" be?!

However, Other, far less story-based games like Tetris and Quake, do have a market too. Did you know that the best selling games are not story driven? Or, they have a setting which doesn't need 20 minute explainings.

Call of Duty, the Modern Warfare series are the best selling games ever. And, many open source project are decently close to them, in pace and style, even if it could be better.

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What are you talking about? Do you know the sellings of all most famous RPG for computers and console? Final Fantasy, Oblivion, and all Bioware games including the new Dragon Age? And anyways you just said it, there can't be such games in OSS environment. Do you think sqauresoft is idiot in investing milions of dollars for their games?

And as last, how can you even compare an OSS fps to call of duty.... come on, no bs here.

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What are you talking about? Do you know the sellings of all most famous RPG for computers and console? Final Fantasy, Oblivion, and all Bioware games including the new Dragon Age? And anyways you just said it, there can't be such games in OSS environment.

Look at http://www.vgchartz.com/ and you'll see that Myst and the Half-Life series are among the few for PC with anything story-like. If you think WoW is anything story-like you may include that series too. Very few of the top selling games are anything like Final Fantasy when it comes to story-telling.

Do you think sqauresoft is idiot in investing milions of dollars for their games?

No, but they have a very brief time-to-market window. OSS projects don't have that over them, but in order to be successful, they need to reuse other people's efforts; not reinventing the wheel.

The AnKi engine probably will have a lot better acceptance if it could seamlessly import maps from other projects.

And as last, how can you even compare an OSS fps to call of duty.... come on, no bs here.

CoD has the tide and the diff on its side, but in terms of the MP mode, what else is there? What does it have, but a lot better graphics than e.g. Urban Terror? And, what else is the "easiest" to improve from an OSS perspective of view? Well I would claim graphics. Still, the gameplay is surprisingly similar.

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No offense but, You have just won the most stupid sentence of the year

I personally feel sorry for the cod developers if they read your post.

Call me cynic, but there are few few original gameplays.

As I see it, you have the

* mission based SP or MP (CoD, Counter Strike's bomb and hostage comes to mind, as well as some aspects of WoW)

* Sport-like games, eg Capture the Flag (Q3A and many others) and perhaps some more

* "Kill Them All" (Team Deathmatch, Last Man Standing etc in a variety of games)

One of the few newcomers was HL2's maze solving "Portal", and, I am not sure I have even heard of a commercial game version of Warsow's speedy jump-race.

As far as realism goes CoD is way ahead of OSS games, but from a graphics point of view, not unreachable. Yet, several components are in place, but at different locations (ie different OSS games). Most of these games strive for visual realism, and, therefore asymptotically end up more and more similar to each other.

What would it take to "merge" many of the OSS components out there? A lot! Is it doable? Yes. But it would take a more coordinated effort than what is done today.

I don't think OSS games will produce High Quality games with a myriad of surprises. But, team based games with missions and excellent graphic are within reach. And, the gameplay variety will then come from on-line playing, not any superior AI.

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We can certainly obtain commercial quality results with FLOSS. Look at ogre, that 3d engine can rip hard ass. OpenAL is heavily used commercially. I can draw the list forever but to the point. Game dev's get paid to be game dev's and can work full time doing art or programming or whatever. All we lack is artists, time and a solid goal. A big game will require a big team, but the more FOSS developers you throw at a project the more they are all going to want to do things differently. Artists are apparently hard to come by these days. I dont think there are limits for FOSS projects should they be properly organized and have suffice manpower (or womanpower).